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<br />L <~:>anQ<"'1 0'-> <......D.........l1HH"" ......./1.../.....- <br /> <br />Krasovec said the exchange took place during a tour of the mine on Aug. 1, <br />1986, nearly two months after the leaks began. <br /> <br />Friedland said he can't recall making the comments to Kravosec. <br /> <br />"Since I have no recollection of anything like this or anything near this <br />fantastic, I'm confident it never occurred," Friedland said. He calls the <br />allegations "just false." <br /> <br />Friedland noted that the engineering firm Klohn Leonoff later lost a suit to <br />Galactic in the Canadian courts over responsibility for the Summitville <br />fiasco. <br /> <br />But the leaks didn't go away. The water kept rising, and the problem <br />haunted Galactic until the day it declared bankruptcy. <br /> <br />Red ink, waste water rise fast <br /> <br />By the end of the summer of 1986, the pool of cyanide solution was rising <br />behind the dike, swelled by the polluted groundwater being pumped back <br />into it. To keep the "bathtub" from overflowing, workers built the dike higher. <br /> <br />"It was a problem that needed to be solved, because the alternative to not <br />coming up with a solution... was you were going to build a couple of dams <br />that eventually got to the moon," said Gerald Wyman, who was hired to <br />replace Roper in 1987. <br /> <br />Meanwhile, the red ink was rising as fast as the water. <br /> <br />In June, Galactic and the bank had hoped the mine would be producing <br />more than 500 ounces of gold a day. But production was stuck at between <br />200 and 300 ounces a day through the summer. <br /> <br />By fall, the Bank of America was nervous about its $25 million loan, but also <br />reluctant to foreclose. The last thing the bank needed was a problem- <br />plagued gold mine in Colorado, said Linkletter, the bank's vice president. <br /> <br />"At this point in time we are probably fully pregnant," Linkletter said in his <br />deposition. He was referring to the alleged strategy of luring the bank into <br />the project with low-ball numbers, knowing that foreclosure would be <br />impossible. <br /> <br />The bank rescheduled loan payments originally due in November 1986. <br /> <br />Bank officials took comfort in Friedland's efforts to cover the debt by selling <br />more securities. <br /> <br />"Mr. Friedland has a proven track record in raising capital, and we should <br />encourage him in his efforts to bring in new capital, which can be used in <br />part to pay down the Summitville debt," Linkletter assured other Bank of <br />America officers in a memo. <br /> <br />Galactic had been covering shortfalls by selling stock at least since 1985, <br />when it became obvious that the gold mine could not be built for the $33 <br />million Galactic had submitted to the bank in the business plan. <br /> <br />But Summltville was looking worse, and Friedland was having problems <br /> <br />http://www.denver-rmn.comlnews/0507 smmt I.shtml <br /> <br /> <br />5/7/00 <br />